A Sunshine Coast diver has reflected on his adrenaline-pumping close encounter with a tiger shark off an island in the Indian Ocean.
Adam Sellars, who owns a freediving and resilience training business, came face to face with the apex animal off the coast of Fuvahmulah in the Maldives.
He’s had several interactions with sharks but this one got his heart racing.
“Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, sharks are super curious and they investigate people but then they turn away,” he said.
“But this shark was like ‘I’m really curious about you and, in fact, I want to touch you to see what you are’.
“It came up from underneath and I thought it was going to turn. I was filming it with my GoPro and, at the last second, I had to get the GoPro out of the way and do a redirect, which is when you place your hand on top of the shark’s nose.
“Sharks are, on average, about 600 kilos so you’re actually redirecting yourself away.
“The sharks feel the pressure and are not used to being touched so they generally turn away. That’s what happened in this instance.
“She was never going to bite: there was no aggression.”
He filmed the moment, which was also captured on video by nearby diver Jono Allen.
Mr Sellars said it was a rush.
“I’d love to lie and say I was full of composure but there was that hit of adrenaline,” he said.
“Because I’ve swum with sharks so much, it was more of a controlled adrenaline.
“When you swim with them a lot you know their behaviour. You still get some strong emotions out of it but it’s not pure fear or panic.”
Mr Sellars admitted he was once afraid of the animals.
“I used to be petrified of sharks,” he said.
“But once I started to swim with them that fear turned into fascination. They’re an incredible animal to interact with.”
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Mr Sellars has a handful of tense moments with sharks, including swimming with a Great White at Lady Elliot Island and being confronted by bull sharks while spearfishing.
“The only time that I thought ‘this is not somewhere I want to be’ was when I was spearfishing off the Sunshine Coast,” he said.
“A bull shark could smell the blood in the water after I’d shot a fish.
“That was a completely different interaction.
“It was looking for the food source and I was in the way.
“He didn’t want me in his territory with the fish, so he kept buzzing me, which is what sharks do with other big sharks. They come in really hot.
“As soon as I left his territory, he was fine.”
Mr Sellars said sharks were misinterpreted by many people. He said they were mostly peaceful creatures that were vital to the environment.
“(The movie) Jaws unfortunately ruined it,” he said.
“That fear was passed down and down and down (generations).
“I don’t want sharks to be sensationalised as a man eater.
“We’ve got enough of those stories, so we’re kind of fighting against that rhetoric.
“I’ve had thousands of interactions with sharks and there was only one where I didn’t want be there (ie the bull shark encounter).
“I gave up spearfishing because there is blood in the water.
“It’s kind of like walking through a lion park with a bit of steak attached to you.
“You wouldn’t walk the savannahs of Africa with steak.
“But in the ocean, quite often with spear fishing, that’s what people are doing.
“I try and protect sharks through educating people, particularly with trips to the Maldives and Lady Elliot Island, where there’s a high concentration of sharks.
“We’re educating people on safe shark practices because there’s a lot we can do as humans to avoid adverse interactions.”
Mr Sellars said people should avoid swimming in dirty water.
“We can’t see the sharks and they can’t really see us but they know there’s movement in the water,” he said.
He also said some fishing practices and swimming near river mouths and bait balls were dangerous.
He stressed the importance of sharks.
“They are a bigger part of the overall ecosystem,” he said.
“We (people) kill so many sharks and if they’re taken out of the ecosystem the reefs will die over time.”
Reefs support oxygen production by providing habitats for photosynthetic organisms like algae and phytoplankton, which release oxygen as a by-product.
“When the reefs die, there will be less oxygen for us,” Mr Sellars said.
He also believed measures like shark nets were primitive and ineffective.
“Australia – Queensland in particular – is kind of a laughingstock with our shark mitigation and how archaic it is,” he said.
“They’re not preventative measures. They are placebos so people feel like they’re safe.
“Shark nets kill other animals, which bring sharks closer.”
A Fisheries Queensland spokesperson has previously told Sunshine Coast News that the government was determined to lessen the effects of control measures on non-targeted shark species and other sea life, and several initiatives were being implemented and/or trialled to achieve this.
Mr Sellars owns and operates The Pressure Project, based at Point Cartwright.
“We do snorkel trips, swim with whales and free diving courses,” he said.
“I also do public speaking around dealing with pressure.”
